Earning a place in the Kingdom of God

It is not fair! My children love to tell me. It is a fact that almost every child in the world will say that, regardless of what their race may be and where they might be from or living in. Have you ever experienced your children or nephews or nieces telling you that “it is not fair”?

It is not fair! When my children tell me this, I often tell them that life is not fair, not fair at all. Some children have more toys and some have less toys and some none at all, some have more friends and some not as many, some have less talent and some with more talent, and so on and so on.

Let us think for a moment, life is not fair, is it? We often see good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people. We see some people working for hours and hours and hours and they get hardly enough to make ends meet. All you have to do is to look at the cleaners of public toilets in Hong Kong, they work very long hours, and they get less than HK$4,000 a month, with no food or lodgings provided by the employers, on the other hand we see people making thousands of dollars with just a simple phone call. My ex-eldest sister-in-law, who in her lifetime never drink, never smoke, never eat excessively, physically fit and died of cancer at the age of 37, and yet there are people who smokes, drinks, eats a lot and never did any exercise in their life living to a ripe old age. And so on and so on. So many things are not fair in this life.

That is why I thank God that we have a God who is fair. We have a God who can be trusted to do the right thing for us. A God who promised to correct all the wrong things and even things up for us, if not later, maybe a bit later. We have a God who tells us that whatever you sow, that is what you will get. In other words, what goes around comes around!

WE have a God who is fair…..Or do we?

If we have a God that is fair, then why do we have all those complaints? Why the story that Jesus tells his disciples, the story about what the Kingdom of God is like? Why the story about how a landowner of a vineyard who goes to town early in the morning at harvest time to hire labourers at the usual rate of minimum pay, and because of his need to have more labourers, make an additional three more trips to town throughout the day to look for more labourers? Consider this, he must have hired all that he could find on each trip, and yet, he still goes to town for more people. Except for the first lot of labourers, whom he agreed to pay them minimum wages, the others he hired them with the promise of a fair wage.

Why the story about how at the end of a very long and hot day in the vineyard the labourers who were hire for just one hour of work got their wages first, and were given a whole day’s wages?

Why all the complaints from the ones who were hired at 6 am in the morning? They were complaining as they had been working for the whole day, and got the same wages as those who only worked for one hour.

And most of all why the words that Jesus ends his story with “Everyone who is now first, will be last, and everyone who is last will be first?”

Is this fair? Is it right? I do not think so.

I would like you to think about it for a moment. Labour leaders, human rights activists, church leaders, and socialists has for years and years been fighting to bring about a day’s wages for a day’s work, as well as equal pay for equal work. It was not that many years ago that a female civil servant here in Hong Kong would be getting less pay than her male counterpart just because of the differences in their sex gender. And here we have Jesus telling a story that threw the entire concept that we have been fighting for outside the window. Have all those good people been wrong all the time? Should those who work half a day get the same pay as those who have worked twelve hours in a day? Or maybe if I start a new job on the 20th of the month ask my boss for a full month’s pay, as this seems to be what the story is telling us?

DO YOU REALLY HEAR THE GOSPEL MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS?
DO YOU REALLY HEAR WHAT JESUS IS TRYING TO TELL US?

“The kingdom of God is like a man who went out to hire some workers for his vineyard…and when the day ended he paid those hired last the same as he paid those hired first.

In fact I may be tempted to say that this parable sets a very bad example. Just like so many of the other things that Jesus said and did:

- Like being together with prostitutes and known criminals.
- Like eating with tax collectors.
- Like performing healing on a Sabbath day.
- Like telling sinners that they are forgiven because they repented from their ways and trusted in him and believed in him.
- Like challenging people whoever had no sin to cast the first stone.

This Jesus of ours sets a poor example, poor by the standards of the world, especially the standards set by the Pharisees for a good Jew.

And as for God, our Father in Heaven, the same God that we said AMEN to today, as well as many other days, is He not the one who sends the rain upon the just and the unjust and makes the sun to shine upon the righteous and the unrighteous?

What is fair in that? Why should the evil and the proud and the greedy and the hateful get the same refreshing rain that the good and humble and the generous and the loving ones get? Why should those people who worked for one hour be receiving the same as those who have been working under the sun for the whole day?

Rev. Susan Moxley, an Anglican church Minister in Nova Scotia, Canada once said the following, and I quote from her:

“Stop looking for a Fair God, and Be Thankful for the One you Got!”

Stop looking for a fair God, and Be Thankful for the One you Got. That sounds provocative, does it not?

Provocative. I think Jesus was trying to provoke us when he tells us the story about the generous landowner who owns the vineyard.

Did you know that all of the stories that Jesus told us are meant to provoke a reaction in us. They are supposed to shock us and make us think. Make us feel. Make us take sides! They come, after all, from the one who said in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 3, verses 15-16, “I know everything that you have done, and you are not cold or hot. I wish you were either one or the other. But since you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out….

A minister once told me that if a sermon does not get to you, if it does not make you feel angry, or ashamed, or lifted up, and hopefully all of the above, then maybe the sermon is in need of something more.

Who are you with? Who do you feel for?

Are you with the labourers who worked in the fields and sweated under a very hot sun for the whole day and received what they agreed upon? Or the ones who were hired later in the day and received what they could not have possibly earn?

Are you with the oldest son who worked hard at his father’s place and did not waste away his inheritance, or the poor sinner who was delivered from the pig sty and pollution of his own foolishness?

Or are you with Jonah, who sat on a hill side and sulked because God had mercy on the Ninevites, or the people of that wicked city who were surely doomed to die had they not repented of their sins?

Or are you somewhere else? Perhaps with the one who told us the parable of the labourers and the parable of the prodigal son? Or with the one who sent Jonah to Nineveh, even though Jonah did not want to go?

A story that maybe you can relate to is one told by the former Anglican Bishop of Los Angeles, Rev. Frederick Borsch. He told us that when his wife got pregnant, he found that he had a desire to have a son. He felt sorry about that now, as it seems rather sexist…but he had two sisters and no brothers as he was growing up, and he wanted so much to have a brother, but when you want something that much, you figure that it will probably not be happening.

But it did! His first son Benjamin was born and all his parental heart when out to him with more love than he knew he had inside him. When his wife got pregnant again, he discovered that he had a very worrisome problem. He was thinking that when the second child was born, and as it grew, how was he going to hide from the second child that he could never love the second child as much as his first?

He must have thought that love was like a birthday cake. The more people that came to share it, the smaller the slices would have to be.

Then, as though to make matters worse, he had twins! But most of us will have guessed what happened. It was like a miracle to him. Suddenly he found that he loved the twins, Matthew and Stuart as much as he loved Benjamin. This was as though the birthday cake had suddenly become larger.

This is what the love of a parent is like. To be able to love all your children with the same level of love.

Stop looking for a fair God, and Be Thankful for the One you got. Provocative! Is it not?

The trouble is that we, in the church often fall into the trip of believing deep down that we deserve God’s grace, which is, when you think about it, how ridiculous it is. We deserve God’s love??? We deserve God forgiveness???

Perhaps that is because when we come to God for forgiveness we are really only paying lip service to our sinfulness. We do not really think that we are all that bad, after all, we come to church, we give to the church a part of our income, we perform service in the church, we give to charity, we help other people when they needed help, and we do not steal, lie, cheat, murder people, dishonour our parents, or commit adultery. We are ok after all. We are certainly better than the people who are living next door to us.

But we are not, are we? Or maybe we are! But does it really matter when it comes to the heart of a parent? Does it really matter when it comes to the heart of God? Are we not the ones whom he saved? Are we not the ones whom Christ calls to, “come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”?

Are we not all his dearly beloved children? Even though some of us may have been around longer and have done good things all their days? And others are second or third or fifth born Christians, and maybe have not done as much? No matter when we were born into God’s family, we are all his children, and God loves us all!

That is a hard thing to believe in when we have burdened ourselves with a merit system, and want to see some extra reward for our efforts, rather than seeing things from the point of view of the God who loves us so much, that he spares not even His own Son for our sake.

We are all His children, and we all need His love, we all need His forgiveness. WE all need a day’s wages if we are to live…

And praise is to God, forgiveness is what we receive when we turn to God. Forgiveness is given to us by the Grace of God, and never could be earned, no matter how much merit you think you might have, for Heaven has no merit system. When we receive Christ into our lives, and do the work that he has set before us to do, the work of the vineyard, the work of pointing the way to salvation, to wholeness, by worship, by prayer, by testimony, by example, by love and care for one another and for God Himself.

Before I finish off my sermon I will like to share a story with you about Heaven:

A man dies and goes to Heaven. Saint Peter
meets him at the Pearly Gates and says, "Ok,
here's how it works. You need 100 points to
make it into Heaven. You tell me all the good
things you've done, and I'll award you a certain
number of points for each item, depending on
how good it was. When you reach 100 points,
you get in."

"Okay," the man says...."I was married to the
same woman for 50 years and never once
cheated on her, even in my heart."

"That's wonderful," says Saint Peter, "That's
worth three points!" "Three points?" he asks.

"Well, I attended church all my life and
supported its ministry with one tenth of my income and service."

"Terrific!" says Saint Peter, "That's certainly
worth a point." "One point?!!

Hey, I started a soup kitchen in my city and
worked in a shelter for homeless people!"

"Fantastic, that's good for two more points, "
Saint Peter says. "Two points?!!" the man
cries.

"At this rate, the only way I'm going to get
into Heaven is by the Grace of God!"

"Bingo, 100 points! Come on in!"



My brothers and sisters, we do not earn God’s love, we respond to it. After all, it was Him who first loves us!

God loves you. End of story.
God loves you. Beginning of a brand new story.

Let us all live that new story. Let us come to God in gratitude every day for what he has done for us all, and in thanksgiving for what he does for everyone who turns to him. Amen.